Mozambique: Government proud of National Park as Unesco World Heritage
The newly discovered smallest bat in Africa jumps from Mozambique to global stardom: Say hello to ‘Rhinolophus gorongosae’
2:34 CAT | 26 Apr 2018
With a mass of only 5 g this “dwarf” becomes Africa’s smallest horseshoe bat. Image: Gorongosa Naional Park Facebook
A new bat species has been discovered in Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique, the institution announced yesterday.
The discovery was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society by a group led by academics in South Africa, in an article in which the species is named Rhinolophus gorongosae.
The mammal “seems to occur only in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique and possibly also on nearby Mount Mecula,” the natural area’s management said in a statement.
The study uses genetic and morphological techniques to demonstrate that it is a species different from neighbouring populations, having a “mass of only five grams” and thus becoming “Africa’s smallest horseshoe bat”.
The article also identified two new bat species (Rhinolophus rhodesiae and Rhinolophus lobatus) in northern Mozambique and other parts of Southern Africa, the statement says.
The study raises the number of bat species in Mozambique to 71, of which 45 live in Gorongosa Park, a conservation project which in recent years has seen a restoration of wildlife numbers and variety after being devastated during Mozambique’s civil war.
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A public-private partnership between the Government of Mozambique and the Carr Foundation was established in 2008 for the joint management of the park.
In 2016, the Government of Mozambique approved the extension of the partnership with the foundation, a US non-profit organisation, for a further 25 years.
Using a combination of bioacoustic, morphometric, and molecular data we have resolved a mystery of cryptic speciation within a group of African horseshoe bats. In the process we discovered a new, endemic @GorongosaPark species! https://t.co/ksx6yobIXc pic.twitter.com/uX2cKwqJuZ
— Piotr Naskrecki (@naskrecki) April 25, 2018
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